This was a family winter vacation with my brother and his wife and kids. Five of us in a van as we had done before in Denver, Colorado few years back. This was going to be a round trip starting from Las Vegas and ending in Las Vegas. Lots and lots of driving. I think it was a bit much of driving but my brother loves to drive.
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| route |
The plan was to land in Las Vegas, go to Zion National Park -> Bryce Canyon -> Monument Valley -> Grand Canyon -> Sedona -> Las Vegas. After that we would take the flight back to Ft Lauderdale and spend the rest of the vacation days in West Palm Beach. This was going to be a 10 day trip.
I took the flight from West Palm Beach and met the family in LV at night around 10 pm. Took Uber to Stratosphere where 2 rooms were booked. Even though it was 11 pm at night, it took more than an hour to check in. There was sooo much crowd.
The next morning was critical as it was the world cup final between France and Argentina - both such great teams with fantastic players. We were all the Argentina family and we won! The hotel was nice - nothing spectacular. The good thing I found was that there was the Budget car rental company within walking distance which would let us return the car at the airport.
After renting the van, picking up some groceries and eating lunch at an Indian restaurant we were off to Zion Park Motel. It was a roadside motel near the park. Sadly all the motels/hotels are always about 45 mins or 60 mins away from the park. There was no breakfast at the motel, but they gave us vouchers for a drink at the visitors shop in front of the motel. We all had hot chocolate there - awesome!!
We did drive at night into the Zion Park. I could see the beautiful mountains and could not wait to get in the park next day. At night we drove again into the park for night photography. Oh darn it was soooo cold!! I was freezing. I had brought enough clothes but I forgot gloves. The nice thing about going around in winter vacation is all the beautiful Christmas decorations everywhere.
Next day, Sarvesh tried out his drone over the park. I enjoyed seeing the mountains with him on the viewer. The drive into the park was beautiful. There was snow in some places. Sadly they did not let us in all the way into the park as the maximum entrance for cars for the day was reached. So we parked at the visitor center and walked around a bit. I can see that it would be a beautiful park, mountains and streams. But I feel we barely saw a fraction of the park in the one day we were there.
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| Zion National Park |
Since we did not want to take the bus around we decided to move on to our next place -
Days Inn, Panguitch, near Bryce Canyon. But we went through Kolob Canyon (part of Zion National Park), also very beautiful.
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| Kolob Canyon |
Even the drive to Panguitch was beautiful, over mountains and ski resorts.
It was night when we reached Panguitch. It was super cold and the parking lot was quite frozen. There was just enough warmth left to order pizza (C-Stop Pizza - good pizza) and pick it up 30 mins later, not too far from the hotel. After breakfast from the hotel we were off to Bryce Canyon. There was not too much crowd here. The first point was "Inspiration Point" and I was sold on Bryce Canyon. For me this was prettier than Zion. I was just amazed at the rock formations. There was snow everywhere which gave the park a different look. And yes, it was cold! We stopped at various points along the drive and it was just beautiful at every spot. It would be wonderful to walk through the park trails. Someday....
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| Bryce Canyon |
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| Bryce Canyon |
The drive to Lake Powell took us through scenic areas. We stopped at Wahweap lookout point. So beautiful!! There was the lake, the dam area and it was sunset. Just beautiful.
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| Wahweap Lookout |
Had dinner at a Mexican restaurant (Fiesta Mexicana), really good food! The great thing about going with family and kids is that the kids take care of finding a good place to eat.
Clarion Inn was a nice place to stay. We got adjoining rooms, which really tickled the kids.
Next morning we were to drive to the Monument Valley. It is on Navajo land. It is about 2 hour drive. The drive was also beautiful. It is all getting quite less populated. All just land and wonderful red mountains.
There was a small fee to enter the Park. There is a hotel also in the park for anyone interested in night views. The first stop was the visitor's center. And that itself has the classic park view!
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| Monument Valley |
The drive through the park was not long, but has great geological views. I am always amazed at how different and how beautiful America is. At one of the stops there were some shops by the native Indians. I did not need to buy anything, but I did want to try some food, so I bought fry bread and we all shared. It was like fried sweet bhatura with powdered sugar on it (or the typical fried bread Americans have at their state fairs).
Sarvesh wanted to see the sunset, so we decided to stay until then. There was nothing much to do for 2-3 hours, so we just lounged around the hotel and enjoyed the view. Sunset was beautiful. The drive back was all in the dark so no more views, but we did stop once for Sarvesh to take photos of the starry night.
I think that night we just had leftovers for dinner. And we had to do laundry, which the hotel had washing machines.
Next day was checkout and on to Grand Canyon. But first - Horseshoe Canyon. I thought it would be a small attraction, but no, the parking lot was full! After about 15 min walk we got to the horseshoe. it was really pretty. No wonder there are a lot of people there. We walked around, enjoyed photography and then drove on.
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| Horseshoe Canyon |
We really wanted to go to Antelope Canyon, but you have to reserve a spot and pay separately and go with only guides. You have to book quite in advance to get the right booking. We did not get it the day before (of course!), so we decided to skip it this time and go to another slot Canyon before going to Grand Canyon. We could not find where the hike began, so that was sort of a loss of 3 hours. Although the drive was pretty and canyons are great to look at.
Grand Canyon started appearing even before the entrance to the park at Watchman Tower. That view! Amazing! All of Grand Canyon is amazing, so I should just get that out of the way. The Colorado river views, the cracks in the earth and how it all formed over millions of years, is just something else. It is just fascinating. And the thing about winter is that we saw snow everywhere, which made it even more beautiful. It just gives it an added great look.
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| Grand Canyon |
We stayed at the
Yavapai Lodge that night. These are small number of rooms over a large area, not a large hotel in one place. So it seems like we are in a cabin in the woods. We went back near the visitor center to get some grocery and buy some momentos from the gift shop. A little incident that happened. It was quite dark outside when we were leaving for the gift shop, and I fell down on the curb! Scraped my knee and sort of twisted my ankle. It was a bit hard to walk but I took plenty of pain killers that night and was much better next day. But the pain lingered for a few months. The most embarrassing thing was that I went to Grand Canyon and fell on the parking lot curb - sigh.
Got up early to see the sunrise from the Mather point. It was nice.
There was no breakfast included in the park lodging, so we had our own and then went for a hike. It was the "Trail of Time", part of the Rim Trail. Each meter of this trail indicates one million years and the markers are geological rocks with specific names. Really interesting. It was about 1.5 miles and took about 2 hours to do as we were stopping and taking photos as we enjoyed the walk. This was the only major hike we were doing today, and I think it was quite good and enough. It led us to the Yavapai point from where we took the bus back to our original visitor center parking. The interesting thing was that there were so many Indians at the Mather's point, but we did not see them anywhere else in the park.
From there we drove on to the entire Rim drive. Stopped at any point where we could. The canyon is huge and beautiful from each spot. As we were turning around to come back, we saw some elk and deer coming out in the evening. Stayed on until about sunset then it was onwards to Cottonwood to our hotel. Hotels in Sedona were either unavailable or too expensive, so we stayed a bit south of Sedona.
Had dinner a forgettable Mexican restaurant. The
Best Western hotel at Cottonwood was comfortable. The drive in the night was not great, in my opinion. There were too many switch backs and a bit stressful to do after a full day of activity and driving. We should have stayed at Sedona somewhere...but...circumstances.
The program today was to see Sedona and drive to Flagstaff before we drove to Las Vegas. There are many things to do in Sedona. I would have liked to stay here one more day. We have to go to the Airport Mesa view point, see the Cathedral Rock, and see if we can get to some vortex points. Vortex points are high energy points from the earth. This is why there are so many spas and wellness places in Sedona. Apparently the entire area of Sedona is on a vortex, so just being there makes you feel good (and it did!).
We did do one hike, I forget which one, it was nice, although the Cathedral Rock one would have been better. It was warm in Sedona. Evening and night were cold. The airport mesa point was awesome! One can see all of Sedona from here. Lunch was Mexican food (again). It was good, different but good. Went to the Tlaquepaque Arts & Shopping Village market since we had some time in the afternoon. Some shops were open and we also did not really need anything.
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| Bond Villain's lair |
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| Amitabh Stupa |
Came back to the Airport road for sunset. There was a specific vortex point on this road. A little hike on a small hill should have taken us there, but I did not "feel" anything.
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| Airport Mesa road |
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| Tlaquepaque Arts & Shopping Village |
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| Vortex point on Airport road |
Drove about a bit at night to see the Christmas decorations in downtown Sedona and then drove on to Flagstaff. We picked a hotel (
LaQuinta) that was on the highway as we just need a place as a stopover. Tonight was just a fast food takeout.
Next day we drove a bit south again to see the beautiful drive and canyons before getting on the road for Vegas.
On the way to Vegas stopped to see Hoover Dam. I remember it differently, well at least less crowded. It is still impressive. There is a new walkway from where the dam is visible clearly And the water level is so low. Drove past Lake Mead, which also seemed low.
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| Hoover Dam |
Checked into our hotel (
Baymont Inn), and went to the strip, of course! Parking is free in some of the casinos, and then we can walk around. Now, if this was a normal place, the casinos would chip in and make a tramway that went to all the casinos on the strip. They can charge $5 per day. But America does not think like that. It is a pain to walk around and also these casinos are quite big! The first one we went to was Mirage, to see the show in Mirage.
Below somewhere in the casinos are food courts. Wanted to get food from Curry Pot, the Indian place but the line was a mile long, because all Indians had descended in Vegas for Christmas! I have never seen so many Indians in one place in America. We ended up eating some Mediterranean, but not falafel because they were out (why? because all Indians ate them - hehe).
Next day was an excursion to the Cactus garden which is free and is associated with a chocolate company. The garden was ready for night light show for Christmas, but we did not visit at night. The garden was nice.
Then we were off to see the decorations in the casinos. Now they are all blurring one into the other but some were just gorgeous. Wynn was a huge one, even their restrooms were fabulous. It was beautifully decorated and even the other parts of it were full of art. Really great!
Next we walked to Bellagio. The walk was also great, saw such great sights. I don't remember it being so crowded and full before (20 years ago).
The Christmas decoration of Bellagio was out of this world! Too good!
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| yeah...chocolate fountain |
Lunch was at Ocean Five, which has all $5 dishes. If I had remembered this before, I would have taken them here in Boynton Beach. We have a location here. There we had to walk to much to get there. Came back later in the evening to see the water fountain show at Bellagio.
Next day was more casino and some interesting shops of Vegas (Hersheys, Coke, M&Ms). Lots of walking today also. We started with the Luxor, which was okay okay. Nothing spectacular and made our way down the strip. By night we were all exhausted, but there was still one more to see...the Venetian. So it was just Bhiaya, Satvik and me out casinoing :-)
Today is the day for Valley of Fire - get out of Vegas day! At least this hotel has breakfast. It's always nice to leave the hotel on a full tummy. Sarvesh is not feeling too good. I think it might be the flu. Our flight is also tonight. So the program was to checkout, go to the park and casinos and then head to the airport. But we changed the plan, and checked out of one room and moved to one room so we could rest before going to the airport.
Valley of Fire is about 2 hr drive north of LV, about 30 mins is off the main highway. It is also crowded. Many people out for vacation! The park is just amazing. I wish we had more time here to do some hiking. It is so much out of the way that overnight stay is not possible so one would have to come back next day, or come early to see more. We did walk a bit, as did Sarvesh, poor him. He did take meds but still. The red rocks just appear out of nowhere and then just continue on.
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| Valley of Fire |
Luckily the van could be returned at the airport, and we were all going to be together and going home.
All in all such a great trip! The only thing I would change is a bit less driving, one more day at Zion, one more day in Sedona. Which really means increase the trip by 2 days :-)
